How does a film school run an MA Filmmaking course during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We are immensely proud of the staff and students at London Film School for ensuring the continued success of our globally recognised MA Filmmaking course, even during a global pandemic.

To keep everyone safe, the School shuttered its buildings to all its MA courses in early February 2020 and, to ensure the learning outcomes of Filmmaking, Screenwriting, and International Film Business remained the same, classes considered to not require in-person attendance, as well as extracurricular masterclasses, were moved online in what has come to be known as a Blended Learning approach to teaching across the UK (more below).

For our MA Filmmaking programme, external studio space was quickly sourced and hired, in addition to the stages at the School in Covent Garden, where we introduced industry-led safety measures. Across all courses, class sizes were kept small with students still expected to give full-time commitment.

In the video below, we hear from staff and students about how the MA Filmmaking course adapted its learning environment, the health and safety precautions introduced to each film set, and an array of added, perhaps unexpected, benefits to blended learning.

 

 

What is Blended Learning?

To ensure we can teach our programmes safely, and in guidance with social distancing measures in place across the UK, we altered some of our teaching delivery and introduced Blended Learning: a combination of in-person teaching and online delivery.

Across our MA programmes, students will be taught in this manner for the foreseeable future. This means students can continue to expect the hands-on parts of the course to be delivered in-person, on- and off-site, under safe social distancing measures, mixed with online teaching in the comfort of your own home.

To ensure we all adhere to social distancing measures, all classes that do not need to be in-person will be delivered virtually. For classes that do take place in person, we have introduced restrictions on class sizes, strict access to facilities, and the use of PPE — as well as LFS face masks.

As the pandemic progresses, the School monitors delivery options and continues to adopt the most appropriate and safe teaching methods where applicable.